Root! with The Decoys at The Evelyn Hotel, Melbourne – Gig review and photos

The Gig: Root! with The Decoys
Where: The Evelyn Hotel, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
When: 26 June 2010
In One Word: Heartbreaking

I promised my long-suffering editor this’d be the last article I write about Root! for a few months, and as fate would have it, this is apparently their last gig for a while anyways. I shall endeavour in any case to keep this review both short ‘n’ sweet.

The main support act call themselves The Decoys, and perhaps contrary to their name, what you see when they walk on stage is exactly what you get. If you like yer rockabilly straight up with no overtly “modernised” trimmings, then these boys certainly deliver, though their lyrics certainly tend more than a little toward the dumber-than-dumb side o’ things (how can one band have so many songs about hating cops and parking inspectors who cramp their style? Heh)! A solid and enjoyable set just the same, and somehow that reliable ol’ rockabilly cliché of the double-bassist “riding” his instrument never gets old with me…maybe the fact that I don’t go to that many rockabilly shows in the first place? Hmmm…

After a highly amusing pre-recording of frontman DC clumsily “inserting” the band’s name into such dubious classics as Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love (Root!)”, the headliners soon take to the stage and do what they do best: Kick just about every other live band in Melbourne’s arse, both aurally and visually. Simple as that. At the end of the show a promised “special interactive” opportunity to tell DC to “Shut The Fuck Up” comes in the form of the frontman teaching us the lyrics to a new song whose sole lyrics are exactly that, and we all of course revel in the opportunity to tell him just how we feel. “Okay then, we will,” he quips at the song’s end, and the band unceremoniously exits stage-left. They still come back for a two-song encore though, the lying bastards, but we let them. That’s just the kind of nice people that we Root! fans are, y’see.

The Melbourne live music scene will doubtless go back to its usual drab, humourless self for a while again now, but as fellow Australian Ned Kelly once said: Such is life. Hurry back from your “winter hibernation”, boys…things just won’t be the same without ya.